Torrent
by heartsways
Summary: This isn't a sequel to "Riptide". Nope. It's a "companion piece". And I know I said I wasn't going to write another part but then I had all these ideas and well, the title was just going to waste so here it is. A companion piece to "Riptide", set post-Season 2 when our merry band of rescuers (or not so merry) are on the shores of Neverland.


**Title:** Torrent  
**Author: **heartsways  
**Rating:** NC-17  
**Fandom: **Once Upon A Time  
**Pairing:** Regina/Emma  
**Disclaimer:** All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.  
**Summary: **This isn't a sequel to "Riptide". Nope. It's a "companion piece". And I know I said I wasn't going to write another part but then I had all these ideas and well, the title was just going to waste so here it is. A companion piece to "Riptide", set post-Season 2 when our merry band of rescuers (or not so merry) are on the shores of Neverland.  
**Author's Note:** You can find me on twitter: heartsways or on tumblr

Neal insists on sleeping with his arms wrapped around Emma, his physical proximity to her an outward display of the importance he feels he has in her life and the huge, gaping spaces that she fills in his own. Their makeshift camp on shore lies near the edge of the forest that springs up where sand becomes soil, the thickness of trees forming a verdant barrier that has yet to be broken by any of them.

So they sleep by a fire, bodies curled around it, indulging in the notion that warmth equals safety; that firelight is enough to ward off any dangers that might emerge from the forest, growing darker and more threatening when the sun falls behind the horizon. Across from Emma and Neal, Snow and Charming adopt the same position. It makes Regina smile thinly as she stares at them – at these women who are allowing their men to believe that they need protecting.

Regina knows better. Regina _is_ better because she doesn't need to assuage the tattered egos of men by diminishing herself. And even if what Emma and Snow are doing is an act of compassion, sympathy – even love – she can't help the faint sneer that twists her lips as she watches them.

It's not just scorn, of course, that pulls at her mouth and prickles icy shards into her chest. No; it's jealousy. It's _always_ been jealousy, somewhere deep down. And she's hidden it and denied it for so long that to acknowledge it now feels like a betrayal, or at the very least, an easy way out. She might not want what Snow and Emma have clutching at them with masculine hands of ownership, resonant of another world, but Regina can't help wishing that she might be offered the opportunity to refuse it.

She sits by the fire as dusk falls and they eat whatever passes for dinner, garnered from the supplies on Hook's ship that are now becoming scant and increasingly tasteless. Regina is becoming tired of the constant planning and talking that the Charmings do, not to mention the incessant ridicule heaped on them by Rumpelstiltskin as he shoots down their proposed rescue operations one after the other. He does it in a more controlled way than in the past, though. His magic might have returned but his high-pitched giggle is silent as he expresses something rather like tolerance for the eager derring-do of Charming and Snow.

Regina can tell that The Dark One is there beneath the surface. _Always_. And the pained, hurt and resentful look that Rumple shoots towards his son as Neal settles down for the night behind Emma speaks volumes. There's a reluctance to the way Rumple limps back towards the ship; a palpable relief to the expressions on those left behind around the fire. It's odd, she thinks, how a child's love for a parent can be so enduring and so fragile all at the same time. She sees that fragility in the way Neal looks at Rumple and the way he clings to Emma.

Well, Regina presses her lips together as she watches them hunker down next to the fire, Emma _is_ the Savior, after all. And Neal's known that a lot longer than any of them.

But she can't watch as the two couples appear to be just that. Coupledom has never really been Regina's oeuvre. There's far too much compromise to be found in relationships for her liking. Snow might like to keep reminding her that she's on a path of redemption – although Regina suspects that's more for Snow's comfort than her own – but old habits die hard. As does loneliness and the oddly detached feeling Regina has when she looks towards the fire.

Emma is staring at her. Her features are hazy through the heat. The air is rippling between them as though it has magic in it, plumes of smoke rising and dissipating so that Regina has to squint a little to see clearly. But Emma is staring.

They never did find resolution to their differences, Regina thinks. And then she smiles at the thought of saying such a thing to Emma, because the Savior might be made of the most powerful magic of all but she's been shaped and molded by a world that scoffs at the deliberate way Regina talks. What Regina might name as _differences_, Emma would call something else entirely.

Regina might have called it something else too, a long time ago. But she's past the point of putting her faith in such foolish notions. True love – or anything like it – isn't for people like her. Not now. Not ever.

Through the flames; through the wisps of smoke bending in the breeze coming off the shoreline and in the wavering, unsteady haze of warmth that lies between them, Regina can see Emma smile back.

It's what makes her get to her feet and back away from the fire, the heels of her boots sinking into sand. Emma sits up, pushing Neal's hands away from her waist, then she scrambles to her feet and follows the footsteps Regina has made, little hollows in the white sand that Emma obliterates with her heavy tread.

"Hey," she says breathlessly, catching up with Regina, fingers closing around the other woman's arm. "You're not…you're not staying by the fire?"

Regina proffers a tight smile and pulls her arm from Emma's grasp, choosing instead to wrap it around her body. She can see how Emma frowns even in the dark that closes around them now they're away from the light of the fire. It casts shadows that aren't meant to be there, shadows that play across Emma's features as she waits for Regina to speak and exercises more patience than usual – certainly more patience than is typical of her.

"I think I'm going to take a tip from Mr. Gold and spend the night on the boat," Regina says quietly. "It's all a little **cozy** up there for my tastes."

She means the comment as a joke, but it comes out in tone that dips towards sadness and Emma glances back behind her at where the fire is burning merrily. Her parents and Neal are inert – probably sleeping by now – and a little further away, Mulan, Aurora and Prince Philip are whispering conspiratorially about something, their heads bent together.

"Oh," Emma breathes. And a flush of shame speeds across her skin, making her thankful that there's a shroud of night dark enough to cover it. "It's not what it looks like – I mean – "

"He's Henry's father," Regina says simply. And there it is: the sort of finality that simply can't be explained away or ignored.

There seems little point in even trying.

"Yeah, I don't know whether you've noticed, but I'm not exactly the happy families type," Emma says in a low tone.

"And I don't know whether **you've** noticed," Regina counters, drawing herself up haughtily, "but I'm not blind and I can see that he clearly loves you."

"So? I love him," Emma darts back. Then she frowns again, her face crumpling into doubt as she casts a backward glance towards the fire and the blanket where Neal is lying. "Just not in the way he thinks. Not in the way **you** think, either," she adds, looking back at Regina.

"I wasn't aware that mind reading was in the Savior's skill set," Regina snaps. There's no need for this, and she can see how Emma knows that their back and forth isn't always about scoring points. Sometimes – most of the time – it's about something else. But the thing that really matters is, like they are, hidden under a mantle of darkness and there's an odd terror that strikes them when they think about it being uncovered and brought to light.

Emma sighs, a grumbling sound that stoops her shoulders. "Come on," she finally says. "Come back to the fire. Sleep."

"No." Regina is obstinate, proud. And even if she desperately wants Emma's invitation, she remembers too many times when it's been handed out forcibly and then retracted the second she displeases them all.

It's the fear of doing just that which makes her stoic. So when Emma stares pointedly at her, eyes gleaming in the silvery moonlight overhead, Regina merely blinks in response and stands her ground.

"Fine," Emma grunts, throwing up her hands in the air. "Do what you want, Regina. You always do anyway. And there I was thinking we might have found some common ground at last. More fool me, right?"

And that's what it means to the Savior, Regina thinks: Emma's description of their difference that so blatantly clashes with her own. Because sometimes a kiss is just a kiss. And then again, sometimes it's so much more and so much less than that. But she can't say that it doesn't rankle, somewhere inside, that one particular kiss held meaning for them both.

"Yes," Regina inclines her head, not wanting to see Emma's sad, resentful eyes and the way her mouth turns down as though she's faintly disgusted by Regina's refusal. "More fool you, Miss Swan."

She lifts her hand and, with a flick of her wrist, disappears in a cloud of smoke.

XxxXxx

"And how are the happy little campers?"

Hook has crept up behind her with an irritating amount of stealth and by the time Regina's whirled around, she's gazing at him with such dark malevolence that he lifts his arms in mock surrender.

"Easy," he grins. "I didn't mean to startle you. But you've been looking out to shore now for a good half hour. Don't tell me you're concerned about their welfare after all this time, hm?"

"The only thing I'm concerned about," Regina spits, "is my son, Hook. He is the only reason I'm here and the only reason I'm not ripping out your heart right now."

Hook's eyebrows rise and he settles back on his heels, nonchalance his longtime companion and the only rebuttal he really needs for Regina's ire. He's seen her like this before: agitated, pensive, features blackened by discomfort. In the past, it was revenge she sought. But now…now she's full of a different kind of disquiet. It occurs to him that he might even know what it is, but perhaps now is not the best time to broach that subject. So he lets out a short bark of laughter and rolls his eyes instead.

"What is it with you and your kind that you can't help plunging your hand into my chest?" he wonders aloud with a sweep of his hook in the air, smiling broadly as it catches the light from a nearby lantern. "It's just a heart, much like any other."

"Is it, now?" A sly look creeps over Regina's features and she takes a step towards him, reaching out and trailing a finger from the base of his throat down over his chest. There's a frisson between them that rises and falls like the waves beneath the boat, both of them feeling it with Regina's fingertip touch.

But it's a tide of change that swells under them and even Hook can feel how half-hearted Regina's intimidation tactics are. He's heard that she's changed in the muttered conversations between Snow and Charming, even The Crocodile has made some offhand comments about her. It's only now that Hook can see it in her eyes; that he can feel it in her touch and he knows…he _knows_ that something has happened.

"The heart," Regina says, drawing close to him – too close for him to be anything other than dazzled by her beauty – and fixing him with a somewhat imperious gaze, "is as unique and individual as the body in which it beats. There's no **just** about it, Hook. If you take a heart, you take everything a person is with it."

Her lips curve into a beatific smile that quite belies the darkness that lurks in her eyes. "I have to wonder what your heart could tell me about you."

Hook steps back, leaving Regina's finger hovering in midair and he gives a dismissive sweep of his hand. "Nothing you don't already know, I'm sure."

Regina chuckles. "Well that's where you're wrong, pirate. Because a heart holds secrets. Things you can't – or won't – tell anyone."

"I see," Hook murmurs, watching closely as Regina turns and gazes out over the prow of the ship, looking towards the shore where the camp is a distant blur of yellow. "And what secrets does **your** heart hold, Regina?"

He knows he's hit a nerve from the way that she turns to look at him, mouth open and eyes wide. It gives him far more pleasure than it should, seeing the Queen so dissembled and his chin juts out as he can't contain the mocking laughter that bubbles up in his throat.

"Oh," he breathes, clutching a hand to his chest. "Oh, no, Regina. Say it isn't so. Does the Evil Queen actually have the ability to feel something other than the sickness of vengeance in her heart?"

It's not the mocking that boils in her gut, acidic and sour. It's not even the knowledge that for all their history together, Hook still wants to steal and smash and grab, as is his wont. No; it's the fact that she's been uncovered. That whatever lingers from the magic she shared with Emma in the mines is on her skin like ichor, tainting it, coloring it, casting a sheen of pitiful transparency over her.

A weakness, her mother would call it. The only weakness Regina's ever really known.

"Be very careful, Hook," she tells him, her voice furious and staccato. "I haven't forgotten how you betrayed me."

"Come now, Regina," he says, bending slightly towards her in a parody of etiquette, "that's all in the past. What I'm more interested in is how you've betrayed yourself, just now."

He leans in close enough so that his lips are almost on hers and she can feel the warmth of his breath flooding across her cheek. "I know that look," he whispers. "I know what it means. And that's one of the secrets of **my** heart."

There's a hand on his breast shoving at him and he staggers backwards, letting out a lazy chuckle as Regina's face contorts into an expression he's more familiar with than he cares admit.

"You know nothing!" she hisses. "Not about love, and **certainly** not about me."

Hook shrugs, equivocal to the end, and looks at her. He's smug, satisfied. "Love? Who was talking about love?" he asks, amused. Then he quirks an eyebrow and shakes his head. "I'd say that perhaps I **do** know something about you."

He turns to walk away, then spins around and looks at her with something like sympathy, or it might be pity. "And perhaps I know something about love, too," he murmurs, then makes his way back across the deck towards the cabins.

XxxXxx

Emma can't sleep. The blanket she's lying on has seen better days and, she wrinkles her nose, there's a musty smell to it that even the salty air of the ocean can't quite dispel. Neal is warm and solid behind her, but there's precious little comfort in his closeness. In fact, she heaves a sigh and inches away from his body, there's not much comfort to be found in _anything_. The time for this – for what Neal so fervently wants and needs from her – is gone.

Part of her wishes that it wasn't, because it would be so easy to fall back into what they had before; easy to allow those childish hopes and dreams he conjured up around her to lull her into a false sense of security. Lying in his arms, Emma knows that he has a place in her heart, but that particular organ is so bruised and aching that whatever part of it he occupies has done grieving over him now.

So she lies awake, staring at the fire as it crackles in front of her. The sound of the ocean is supposed to be soothing, she thinks resentfully. People have machines by their beds to play wave sounds so they can sleep. But she knows that out there, on the crest and fall of those waves is a ship. And on the ship, Regina.

It's kind of annoying, really, how she can't stop thinking about her. Wondering if she wanted to stay with them around the fire; wondering why she didn't. Wondering if there's enough magic in the world to mend what's broken inside the other woman.

Emma suspects that there isn't, and that there's really only one thing that can make Regina whole again. If they don't find Henry, if they can't get him back, then –

She freezes, listening intently. Something in the forest is moving. Emma hears a twig snap and leaves slap against the trunk of a tree, then nothing.

Silence.

It's only when her lungs begin to ache that she realizes she's holding her breath and, letting it out in as steady a stream as she can, Emma feels her heart begin to clatter inside her ribcage. The forest is quiet again, but _too_ quiet. Like there's something out there, waiting and biding its time.

She extricates herself from Neal's arms, pausing when he lets out a little moan as his hands fall onto an empty blanket. Crawling forwards, Emma grabs her sword and gets to her feet, fingers tightening around the hilt. A little further up the shoreline, she sees the still figures of Mulan and Prince Philip, lying protectively around Aurora.

Waking them would only alert whatever's in the forest and cause unnecessary panic, she thinks. Although, given the way a prescient fear is prickling on her scalp, she's not entirely sure _some_ panic might not be a tiny bit helpful right now.

Taking a breath, Emma picks her way past the sleeping figures around the fire and boldly walks towards the brush at the edge of the forest, squinting into the pitch black and clenching her teeth irritably when it reveals nothing but shadows and the tall overhang of branches that wave in the breeze, daring her mettle to prove itself.

It only takes a couple of minutes into the woods before Emma stops again and glances back over her shoulder. She can still see the flickering light of the fire, but it seems very far away now, swallowed by the thicket that's closed around her as she's pushed her way through. For a second she blinks in the encroaching gloom, the air damp and fecund. It's cooler among the trees; the only sound she hears is her own breathing, loud and uneven.

Then, a rustling to her right, followed by a grunt of abject annoyance has her holding the sword aloft, pointed out in front of her to ward off any foe. Emma's heart is beating so hard that she grimaces and shakes her head to try and dispel the rush of blood into her brain that washes through her ears.

"Alright," she growls in as menacing a tone as she can muster up. "I know you're there. I'm armed."

Looking at the sword, Emma's brow wrinkles into a frown. It's hardly her trusty gun and, if she's honest, killing a dragon kind of seems more like a fluke in her memory than the act of a marauding White Knight. But she ignores the way her hand wobbles a little and instead takes a step towards the noise.

"I'm not alone," she says, as there's more rustling and a trembling of black leaves in the darkness ahead. "We've got you surrounded."

She grimaces, then, because…well, _really_. She sounds like all those terrible movies that Henry loves to watch where the hero speaks in clichés and never loses. _Everyone loses, kid_, Emma had told him. _They might not know it at the time, but everyone who fights loses something._

"And who's **we**, exactly?" An all-too familiar voice emerges out of the darkness, followed by a figure that comes into view as branches are pushed to one side. "Did you bring your band of merry men to capture me?"

Regina approaches, then lifts her hand and swats the sword to one side with a gesture that Emma's pretty sure belongs more to the Evil Queen than the woman she's seen over the last few days. Arm falling limply to her side, Emma lets out a grating sigh of relief.

"Jesus," she gulps, "I thought we were being attacked."

"And I thought I'd finally got some time to myself," Regina drawls. "It appears we were both wrong."

"Time to yourself?" Emma echoes incredulously, lifting her hands and sweeping them around the forest. "There could be anything in here, Regina! Something dangerous!"

"The only thing that's dangerous," Regina reaches out and wrests the sword from Emma's hand, "is the rather cavalier way you're waving this around." She jerks her chin towards the weapon before glaring pointedly at Emma.

"Well, excuse **me**, Your Majesty, but I'm supposed to be the Savior so I was…you know…saving. Or something." Emma's voice trails off lamely and she shrugs self-consciously, snatching the sword back from Regina and shoving it into the scabbard hanging from her waist.

"Savior," Regina snorts. "The way you handle that thing, you're more likely to take out your own eye than save anyone else."

"Whatever. What do you mean, time to yourself?" Emma ignores the barb and leans forwards until she can actually see Regina's features properly. "I thought that was why you went back to the ship. You know, to indulge in your over-developed sense of solitude. Or to sulk."

Regina sighs impatiently and frowns at the blonde. "A ship where it seems I'm the whipping boy to alleviate the boredom of its captain in whatever juvenile way he seems fit."

"Hook?" Emma's eyebrows rise as she offers up a silent prayer of thanks that he was as reluctant to come ashore as they were to spend another night in his company.

"Hook." Regina's mouth forms a tight line of discontent. It's not so much the fact that Hook was mocking her. It's really the fact that he can see all the things she's trying to hide, and she wonders, fearfully, if Emma can too.

She takes a step back, away from the blonde as Emma rolls her eyes. "He's such a…such a…"

"A charmless pedant?" Regina suggests.

"I was gonna go with 'ass', but sure, whatever," Emma responds, waving her hand in the air. "A charmless pedant," she repeats slowly, saying the words as though they've got some sort of foreign taste to them.

"For once, your ability to be succinct is actually appropriate. I think 'ass' might be the word I was looking for," Regina says, deadpan. In the darkness, her eyes meet Emma's and they both smile a little before letting out a soft, relieved laugh at exactly the same time. It's not funny at all, really, but it does break the tension and for that, both women are intensely grateful.

"So, come on, what are you really doing out here?" Emma moves closer to Regina. It's instinctive, borne from antagonism but now it feels different. Emma wants to call it _safe_ but she knows it can't be that, not when she's seen the extent of Regina's magic and knows what it can do. But it speaks to her own powers in a way that she can't deny, and Emma fancies that she feels them wake inside her now as Regina's features come into focus.

"I…I needed some time to think."

"About what?"

There's an innocence to Emma's question that reminds Regina of Henry. It stabs longing into her heart and she winces slightly as she looks into eyes that hold unimaginable depth.

"That's private."

"Is it?" Emma's voice drops to a lower tone, one that resonates around them before it's quickly dampened by the silence of the huddling trees. "We never did have that talk, you know."

Regina's breath catches in her throat for a moment and she's aware of nothing other than the proximity of the blonde, the way that she's looking at her and how the trees seem to close around them, a cocoon that is made of just them and whatever it is that rises now in the air. It feels thick, heavy. It feels as though the sensation of sharing their powers is still prevalent; now the connection has been made it won't ever go away.

With a pained expression, Regina stumbles backwards, halting only when she bumps up against the mossy solidity of a tree trunk behind her. Emma keeps coming, just like she always has done. Regina gasps and realizes that this is who the Savior is – this is who _Emma_ is – and she won't ever stop coming at her and wanting to know more, be more.

"You know I'm the one who's supposed to be running away, don't you?" Emma's voice is a whisper, like a breeze moving the leaves around them.

"Emma, don't," Regina hears herself say.

"What is it?" Emma asks wonderingly, shaking her head. "This…this **thing** between us. Magic and – and Henry and fairytales and…what **is** it?"

"I don't know," Regina says. And she doesn't. But the ideas that have filled her head with foolish notions of what it could be are terrifying, and it's fear that pulls at her mouth and yawns inside her chest as Emma moves towards her, their bodies almost touching.

"I'm supposed to hate you."

"And I you," Regina breathes. But it's not hatred that races through her veins and quickens her heartbeat. It feels more like magic, the euphoric rush of sensation and understanding and all that she clings to in order to feel whole again.

"But I don't. I think – I feel…" Emma wants to say more, but the words don't come and she gulps over what might be said and what is silenced by her own incomprehension. Her mouth remains open, lips a dark, untraced path.

"Please." It's hard to tell whether it's an entreaty or a plea for cessation that comes from Regina. The forest creeps around them, drawing the blackness from them until it seems that all that's left is light. Blinding, incandescent light that makes them both blink and shiver a little.

Regina lifts a hand and brushes a lock of hair from Emma's cheek, fingertips lingering on cool skin. She can't be sure, shrouded as they are in the canopy of the forest overhead that obfuscates and blurs her vision, but she thinks she feels the wetness of tears under her touch.

It comes, as have most of the epiphanies in her life, with a backwash of emotion that weakens her knees and makes her sag against the tree behind her. In the moment that she feels like she's going to fall, there are strong hands on her arms and Regina knows that she's safe. If it only lasts for a second, she knows that she's safe.

When she darts forwards and presses her lips against Emma's, there's gratitude in her kiss; it's full of such pent-up longing and the unutterable need that Regina has to simply _feel_ that when Emma's hands slide into her hair, she moans.

The kiss deepens. It's gentle, exploratory, caught between the desire to savor it and the need to know more. There's a latent hurry that they both feel, grasping at one another as Regina is backed up against the tree, but it's tempered by the way that the tip of a tongue can elicit a gasp as it slides into the hollows at the corner of a mouth. It's a new way of learning about one another and it is bound in the fragility of emotion, so close to the surface that Emma thinks she can taste it in every sigh that floods wetly over her lips.

Regina is dizzy, and when Emma's mouth drags along her jawline, she leans her head back against the tree and closes her eyes, seeking clarity and finding none. There's no sense to be made of this, of course. No logic or self-determined mobility that might help her. There's only sensation, feeling, the sound that comes from Emma's throat as she traces a damp line down Regina's neck. That's all that really matters, in the end. Maybe it's all that ever did.

"More," Emma mutters against Regina's skin, her lips resting in the dip at the base of Regina's throat. "I want more." Her hands are greedy now, fingers scrabbling at the fastening on Regina's coat, sliding underneath with harried want.

Regina laughs softly. She can't help herself. Because Emma's already taken so much from her that she's not entirely sure she has anything left to give. Emma's hand thrusts past the waistband of her pants, clumsy and eager and all the things that quite belie the embodiment of what a Savior should be. There's an odd acceptance in letting Emma take this now. Or perhaps it's the fact that Regina wants to offer it that makes her arch from the tree as questing fingertips slide between her legs and into her.

She clings to Emma now, wrapping her arms around the blonde's neck and pressing her mouth against Emma's cheek.

"More," Regina whispers in a guttural, broken voice. "I want more."

Emma's deep sigh overwhelms her, consumes her and drags her under as Regina feels herself come alive again. She's always wanted the things she can't have; Emma has, too. The difference between them doesn't seem so disparate anymore; there's a synchronicity in the way they move, pressed against one another as though they can never be quite close enough.

Regina hears her name, whispered in still of the forest. Emma's forehead presses on her shoulder, blonde hair trickling over her coat that is open and hanging loose. She feels it build inside her, this feeling that she can't quite name and has tried to hold back with the futility of her own self-belief. But she's lost that now; the dam must surely break and if it does – _when_ it does – Regina knows she'll drown in this.

There's a moment when she wants to resist, but it's gone as quickly as it enters her head and she stiffens, clutching at Emma and pushing her hips forwards before she breaks, coming apart and trembling as waves of sensation wreak glorious havoc throughout her entire body.

They don't move. Around them, neither does the forest. It is as quiet and portentous as the way they hold one another like lovers do. Like lovers should.


End file.
